Men receive from their Parents, that Hatreds are kept alive from one Generation to another; and when Men act by Instinct, Hatreds will descend when good Offices are forgotten.  For the Degeneracy of human Life is such, that our Anger is more easily transferred to our Children than our Love.  Love always gives something to the Object it delights in, and Anger spoils the Person against whom it is moved of something laudable in him.  From this Degeneracy therefore, and a sort of Self-Love, we are more prone to take up the Ill-will of our Parents, than to follow them in their Friendships.

One would think there should need no more to make Men keep up this sort of Relation with the utmost Sanctity, than to examine their own Hearts.  If every Father remembered his own Thoughts and Inclinations when he was a Son, and every Son remembered what he expected from his Father, when he himself was in a State of Dependance, this one Reflection would preserve Men from being dissolute or rigid in these several Capacities.  The Power and Subjection between them, when broken, make them more emphatically Tyrants and Rebels against each other, with greater Cruelty of Heart, than the Disruption of States and Empires can possibly produce.  I shall end this Application to you with two Letters which passed between a Mother and Son very lately, and are as follows.

    Dear FRANK,

If the Pleasures, which I have the Grief to hear you pursue in Town, do not take up all your Time, do not deny your Mother so much of it, as to read seriously this Letter.  You said before Mr. Letacre, that an old Woman might live very well in the Country upon half my Jointure, and that your Father was a fond Fool to give me a Rent-Charge of Eight hundred a Year to the Prejudice of his Son.  What Letacre said to you upon that Occasion, you ought to have born with more Decency, as he was your Fathers well-beloved Servant, than to have called him Country-put.  In the first place, Frank, I must tell you, I will have my Rent duly paid, for I will make up to your Sisters for the Partiality I was guilty of, in making your Father do so much as he has done for you.  I may, it seems, live upon half my Jointure!  I lived upon much less, Frank, when I carried you from Place to Place in these Arms, and could neither eat, dress, or mind any thing for feeding and tending you a weakly Child, and shedding Tears when the Convulsions you were then troubled with returned upon you.  By my Care you outgrew them, to throw away the Vigour of your Youth in the Arms of Harlots, and deny your Mother what is not yours to detain.  Both your Sisters are crying to see the Passion which I smother; but if you please to go on thus like a Gentleman of the Town, and forget all Regards to your self and Family, I shall immediately enter upon your Estate for the Arrear due to me, and without one Tear more contemn you for forgetting